Portage River Fishing Trip

Yesterday (Sunday) my dad, Lauren and I took a trip 50 miles south of Anchorage to a place called the Portage River which is fed from the Portage Glacier. The Portage Glacier is huge tourist attraction, which has its own visitor center. The water in the river is natually gray, as is most rivers in Alaska because of the crushed rock from the glaciers (glacial silt). I was on a canoe with one of my dad's friends, Ira. My dad and my sister took one of Ira's pontoons down the river. We floated for about an hour total ( a few miles), but stopped right in the middle to fish for about 4 hours.

The 4 photos above this are ones that I took while floating down the river. The first two are of some glacier that I don't know the name of which was to the west of us, and the third one is of Portage Glacier. The fourth one is just of some mountain.

This is where we fished for awhile. My dad is on the far right, Ira, and then my sister, Lauren. The other two guys were just some people we didn't know. There was a variety of Dolly Varden, Salmon and trout in the river and you could see schools of them right in front of you, but not many were biting. I only hooked one fucking fish that day!

This is the fish that my dad caught it was about 10 pounds, but it was a 'dog' salmon (salmon that's not worth catching), so he threw it back.

Here are some pictures of Dad, Lauren, and Ira, notice how gray the water is, plus its so fucking cold (you can die of hypothermia after being in for a few minutes if you're not careful-good times).

This is a picture of the Cook Inlet at low tide. At high tide, this is covered in water. The Inlet has two arms, the Knik arm, which branches up to where I live, and the Turnagain arm (named after Captain Cook, who figured out after travelling north along the US and Canada at this point that there was no trans-atlantic passage in North America, so he had to 'turn again'). Some times the tide comes in so fast, you can physically see a wave come in-it's called 'bore tide' or something like that.

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The next few pix were ones that I took while driving down to Portage on State Highway 1(there are only a few highways up here).

Notice I'm taking a lot of pics of the same glacier-it was in sight for quite awhile and I was bored. Notice the mud from low tide on the Turnagin arm. A few years back a newlywed couple took some quads out here and the bride drowned, or sunk into the silt because once you step in this stuff, you cant get your feet out. Now the Coast Guard has a hovercraft that will come out and has a special water pump that shoots water around your feet to get them loose. Hopefully they'll get there in time to save you-goodluck.

The photo on the left are some dead trees from the 1964 alaskan earthquake (a tidal wave killed the trees and they've been like that ever since).

We were just about to our destination. The train you see takes people to the Prince William Sound (there's no road to that place). There's also a train that takes automobiles.

This particular picture is of Alyeska Ski Resort with no snow, except for the glacier on it.

This sign was posted at where we parked by the river-notice the hole right in the middle of the sign..

That's it for pictures of this trip. This concludes our Alaska lesson for the day.

Click here to see the Hooters photos

Click here to see week 1 photos

Click Here to see the Beluga Lake Fly-in fishing trip photos

Click here to go to the Beluga Movie Page

Click here to see week 3 photos

Click here to see the Little Susitna River fishing photos

Click here to see Lauren’s Pop Warner page

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